by Timothy Justice

Created on: March 06, 2011   Last Updated: March 29, 2011

There are two types of folks who engage in spring cleaning: those who don't hoard and those who do. If you're part of the latter group, you probably don't need this article. If you're part of the "rest of us", here are a few tips on how to clean up that attic overflow:

Handle it as little as possible. Don't get sentimental; if you haven't used it in the past year, you aren't likely to use it this year. If you handle it, you're likely to get sentimental, so have four boxes: items to keep, items to sell, items to donate, items to throw away. At least half of your items should be in the last three categories. If not, you may want to go through the pile again.

If it has significant retail value, you'll probably want to put it in the "sale" pile. Let's face it, if you forked over $600 for a nice treadmill to keep last year's New Year's Resolution, donating it could be painful, not to mention cost you a lot of potential extra cash. Post it on Craigslist or have a rummage sale and discount it deeply. You probably won't get $500 for a year-old $600 treadmill, no matter how lightly used it is, but a bargain hunter probably wouldn't blink at forking over $250-300. If you want to get more out of it, you may want to consider bartering rather than an outright sale.

Donations are the hardest part. Many thrift stores are overwhelmed with items they cannot sell, so choose the donations carefully. Clothes usually don't sell too well at thrift stores, so you may want to give them to a DV shelter or CASA, to make sure these items get to people who can use them. When donating to a thrift store, apply the rule to only give away items you would buy yourself.

After all of this, you will still have your throwaway pile. Before throwing it away (and filling landfills with unnecessary waste), determine if it could have a better use elsewhere. Old paper can be shredded and added to a compost pile, and many "junk" items would be quickly received if posted to your local freecycle group or on Craigslist. In fact, if you have a hard time letting go of stuff, giving it away probably inflicts less emotional damage than plopping it in a dumpster.

A word of caution on electronics, though: Whether you donate, sell, or dump anything with a hard drive (computers, iPods, etc), be aware that they may contain data that someone else could misuse. It may be worth your while to go through a local professional in disposing of these items properly. Cell phones can often be used by DV shelters, and many nonprofits have "cleanup" policies for donated old computers.

If you follow these steps closely, you can use your spring cleaning time to rid yourself of ghosts of spring cleaning past, and immediately begin accumulating more junk for next year's purge!

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